Winning the Battle of the Bulge the Banting Way

25 April 2014, 12:30

For about 40 years I haven't been able to see anything between my navel and my knees, except in the mirror. This sorry state of affairs has recently begun to change. I can now see some of my wobbly bits and this is all due to the fact that I'm Banting. Banting? Yes, this is an LCHF (Low Carbohydrate High Fat) diet first tried out by William Banting (1796 - 1878) on the recommendation of his physician Dr William Harvey. He was a grossly obese funeral undertaker who tried every conceivable diet (before the LCHF diet) without success.The diet changed his life. Not only did he lose a huge amount of weight, he became much healthier too.

Dr Atkins and Prof Tim Noakes have in modern times advocated this diet. Both of these gentleman have been villified by so-called expert nutritionists. They even went so far as saying that Atkins suffered from a heart attack because of his diet. The truth is that Atkins had an endocarditis of VIRAL origin that had nothing to do with his diet and he actually died from complications after slipping on a snowy surface and hitting his head on the pavement.

Tim Noakes and various authors (Sally Ann Creed, Jonno Proudfoot and David Grier) have written a very popular book: "The Real Meal Revolution". In this book Prof Noakes and the other authors make an extremely strong case for avoiding carbohydrates and ingesting fats and a moderate amount of protein.This, of course, goes against the advice of countless nutritionists since 1977. According to the authors, in 1977 the United States Senate Select Committee on Nurition and Human needs adopted the 1977 Dietary Goal for Americans (USDGA). This has been an unmitigated disaster for Americans and by extension gullible people in countries like South Africa. The American Ancel Keys has a lot to answer for. He is probably single handedly responsible for the obesity epidemic in America and elsewhere. Tim Noakes clearly tells us in the book why Keys's so-called proof that saturated fat in the diet raises blood cholesterol concentrations, is totally flawed and not valid. As is so often the case, politics also played a role in this scenario.Tricky Dick Nixon through Earl Butz the Secretary of Agriculture subsidized farmers to grow corn and soya beans on a massive scale. This started the whole high carbohydrate habits of Americans leading to the obesity endemic. Please read Tim Noakes's expose in the book for more details.

Some of my friends have said that they will not go for Tim Noakes's diet because he radically changed his mind about "carbo-loading" before a long distance race. They say if he could change his mind about that, who knows if he will change his mind again about the LCHF diet? To me, Tim Noakes is a true scientist. Religionists don't often change their minds because they "believe". Scientists like Tim Noakes constantly look for flawes in their reasoning and if necessay will change their approach if new evidence (to them) becomes available. The crux of the matter is that he is willing to admit that he was wrong, and has adequately proven to my satisfaction that his new approach is the right one.

In my second year at varsity we learned about the digestion of fats as part of our physiology course. Even in those days (1956) it was quite obvious to me that fat in the diet cannot possibly make you fat.In order for fat to make you fat it will have to be absorbed from the gut directly unchanged and then deposited in your fat depots. This is clearly not the case. Fats have to undergo a series of steps before it can be used as energy. Carbohydrates and especially sugars are absorbed unchanged into the blood stream and when not burned up immediately by energetic exercise, will be rapidly deposited as fat in the liver and fat depots accross the body. (In my case, the belly).

I also have type two diabetes (T2DM). The good news is that a number of patients with T2DM have been totally cured of this disease by adopting the Banting diet. I'm looking forward to that. When I started this diet about two weeks ago I weighed 95kg. I now weigh 91.8kg. I thoroughly enjoy the recipes in The Real Meal Revolution. I would recommend that you buy The Real Meal Revolution without delay, if you are at all worried about your shape or if you have T2DM.

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